Hi -

Will Photoshop 4 or later, run on a computer with an ADM-K6 processor? i.e a Compac 5340.

I am currently running Photoshop 3.0 on an old Pentium, which just crashed. I went to the Compac 5340 because of low price, pretty good RAM and hard-drive. Now I realize it may not be able to run Photoshop, if I upgrade. Of course 3.0 does not run well with Windows '98.

Thanks!

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), October 11, 1999

Answers

Your processor sounds adequate, but the most omportant thing for photoshop is the amount of RAM you have. I ran photoshop on an old p75, but I had 64M. Window$ is a resource hog and photoshop is as well (whatch out for those mondo swap files).

-- Steve Harkness (s_harkness@hotmail.com), October 29, 1999.

Hi Steve, Interesting last name you have!

Thanks for the response. Of course it is an AMD K-6 [not ADM]. I think I have adequate RAM, 96 K & 4.3 hard-drive. I am running Photoshop 3.0 now, but it is not designed for Win '98, and I have to do several 'work-arounds' which get to be a pain.

What got me thinking about the problems was this. My Epson printer has a piece of software called Sierra. When I installed it, it told me that my processor was not fast enough. Considering that the software is older than my computer, I was puzzled. Then the Photoshop specs say that a Pentium processor is required - is that just an ad tie-in or what.

Anyhow, I think I am getting there. Again, many thanks,

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), October 30, 1999.

Whenever working with Photoshop and hardware requirements there are actually two questions: Will it run? and Will it run comfortably for working with high res photos?

The first can be answered yes on minimal hardware. I ran Photoshop 4.0 on Win95 on an AMD 133 (which is really just a souped up 486) and 32MB of RAM.

However, the first question only sets you up for failure if you intend to do high resolution files. With that minimal setup, I was only working with images less than 600x400 pixels.

Most recommendations I've seen for digital images which can be made into 8x10 prints is 2000-3000 pixels on a side or so. For images of that size, with additional adjustment layers, etc. you need a bigger setup for comfortable operation. My current setup is an AMD 300, 192MB RAM, a 500MB partition just for Photoshop's swapfile.

I don't know the stats of that particular Compaq model, but the AMD is not a problem.

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." O.M. Jenkins

-- O.M. Jenkins (omjenkins@yahoo.com), November 23, 1999.